Star Wars: First Assault outed by trademark

News of a new LucasArts game has been leaked online, with the company preparing a multimedia blitzkrieg that includes pencil sharpeners, action figures, and sticker books.

Is LucasArts going back to its glory days?

LucasArts is working on a new video game called Star Wars: First Assault, or at least that’s according to a number of trademark filings and the (currently empty) web address StarWarsFirstAssault.com

The filings were first noticed by website Fusible , and were submitted to the US Patent and Trademark Office on August 23rd. But the name doesn’t just cover video games but also everything from pencil cases and sharpeners to postcards, temporary tattoos, novels, music, animation, and movies.

Clearly this is a big deal for LucasArts, perhaps bigger even than the now much anticipated Star Wars 1313 – whose mature-rated content won’t see it appearing in too many sticker books.

Since the game hasn’t been officially announced by LucasArts there’s no clue as to what it actually is, although the name is reminiscent of the ground-breaking Rebel Assault – which back in 1993 was the first widely successful action game to require a CD-ROM.

In gameplay terms though Rebel Assault was an on-the-rails dud and after a much less successful sequel LucasArts began to focus more on the Rogue Squadron series. Although that that now also hasn’t seen a sequel in several years.

As Star Wars nerds the name also reminds us of the opening crawl of the original film, which talks about a ‘first victory against the Galactic Empire’. Whether that’s relevant or not we can only guess but the merchandise is certainly reminiscent of the way LucasFilm tried to handle the Star Wars: Shadows Of The Empire concept.

Back in 1996, before the prequels, the idea was to create a range of merchandise – including a novel, comic book series, toys, and the Nintendo 64 launch title – as if a new movie had been released, but just without the movie.

It didn’t seem to be particularly successful at the time, but maybe they’re planning to give the idea another go…